What Mississippi State coach Dan Mullen said about Auburn football after 49-10 rout

AUBURN, Ala. — There weren’t many positive conclusions for Dan Mullen to draw.

Mississippi State’s coach left an SEC stadium for the second week in a row with a blowout loss to a conference foe. Mullen
had many takeaways from the game — inexperienced players, Auburn’s run game, blown calls, etc. — but few of them, if any,
were positive.

He met with the media following Mississippi State’s 49-10 loss to Auburn. Check out what he had to say on a variety of different
topics below.

On getting blown out: “Give Auburn a lot of credit. They did a good job making big plays out there on the field. We did a poor job to me. We did
everything wrong that you need to do when you come on the road to win a game. If you are going to try to win on the road,
we did basically everything you shouldn’t do.”

On the primary concerns: “I don’t think we executed real well. Today we didn’t execute real well. We made some critical errors and mental errors, but
that happens when you are a young team.”

On not having any breaks: “You look at those penalties, everything. We had a bunch of freshmen playing. We had 10 penalties and they had one. We had
a touchdown taken away from us, it looked like in the game. So everything you needed to do no the road we didn’t do, penalties
and a touchdown taken off the board i guess. There is nothing we can do about that. That is someone else. They took that off
of the board for us and hurt the momentum.”

On aggressiveness: “I didn’t see it against Georgia. I didn’t think we prepared well. I thought we had a little more of it tonight, but like
I said, we just had 10 penalties to their one. We had dropped passes. We gave up a bunch of explosive plays. We even had a
touchdown taken of the board. That’s all of it.”

On whistle blown on fumble return TD: “It killed it, but I can’t control that. We had to play Auburn. We had to play the crowd and all of the other circumstances
out there. I think that really hurt momentum, especially when you’re a young team. … I think it just hurt the momentum. What
you’re looking for is seizing momentum and seizing some edge, and I think that really hurt when you have young players out
there.”

On two big losses affecting the bye week: “Maybe a couple years ago as a younger coach I would think that way. You could possibly get frustrated, but I am not going
to do that. At this point, I am not happy, but I am not going to get frustrated and get out of whack. We are going to go coach
our guys really hard and find a way to get better as a team and get back home.”

On yardages and score not matching up: “If I would’ve known that we had close to the same rushing yards as them at the beginning of the fourth quarter, I would’ve
said it was a three-point game, and we’re going to try to win it at the end. The big plays really hurt today on the defensive
side of the ball. There were some missed opportunities on the offensive side. Last week, I don’t think we played well. I’m
anxious to see the film this week to see if we played better than last week, but just missed some plays. If that’s the case,
then we’ll take a look and try to get that fixed. If we played worse then that’ll just be disappointing we didn’t get better.”

Jeffrey Simmons, defensive line

On Auburn’s offense: “I mean, it wasn’t dangerous. We screwed up the communication. We took away what they do best — run. They were throwing the
ball, and we just have to do better, especially up front, and get better with converting the pass. We, defensive linemen,
have to play runs, get to the passer and the quarterback. Half of that was kind of us, up front, and we just have to get to
the quarterback.”

On the scoop-and-score called back: “It was a momentum killer. I guess the referee made a good call on it. We have to move on from that. A call is just a call.
We have to move on from it.”